Sunday, December 27, 2015

If you recall from my last post (too long ago--sorry!), I was not a big fan of the Sherlock Holmes-penned tale, The Adventure Of The Blanched Soldier. While I applauded Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's attempt to do something new, I thought the approach a failure. The tale was poorly told, essentially a series of LONG expositional narrations. Holmes was nowhere near a good a writer as Watson, and we sorely missed the doctor's descriptive detail. Holmes kept too much from the reader, so his solution seemed to be plucked out of thin air.

Well, The Adventure Of The Lion's Mane corrected much of that, and even though it, too, was "written" by Holmes, it is superior to Blanched Soldier in almost every way. Holmes' writing style is much more relaxed, and far more engaging. The characters are much more interesting. Holmes shares his thinking with the readers along the way, so we are viewing the mystery with him, and not watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat. There are a plethora of clues and suspects, making Lion's Mane really a pretty good read.

And then we find out the jellyfish did it.

It is interesting that, for both of the stories Doyle chose to feature Sherlock as narrator, no crime had been committed, and there was no villain. That, I might suspect, is part of the reason Lion's Mane gets lumped in with Blanched Soldier and dismissed as a failed experiment.

It's not as if every Sherlock Holmes mystery requires a crime...many haven't. And you don't always need an actual villain--but someone needs to have some agency in the tale, there must be some human reason for the events we have followed.

In Twisted Lip, for example, there was no crime committed (putting aside any vagrancy or begging laws). And there was no villain--Neville St. Claire was just engaged in a fairly embarrassing occupation, and wished to hide it from his family. But there was still human activity to uncover, an examination of motives and behaviors, and someone trying to frustrate Holmes' investigations

But in Blanched Soldier, the "mystery" was that Godfrey Emsworth had contracted a socially ostracizing disease. Shocking, perhaps. But Godfrey had not done anything to deserve getting sick, and was not behind any kind of master plot aside from staying hidden. There was no human agency to uncover, except for a slight social lie. Heavens, who among us hasn't said "Tell them I'm not home!"? That's hardly a mystery requiring Sherlock Holmes!

Of course, such a story can work--Blanched Soldier is very similar to Yellow Face, if you think about it--but Soldier was not well-written enough to grip us with a situation, so the lack of crime and villain is more noticeable and frustrating.

Despite many suspects and motives, Lion's Mane pulls the rug out from the reader, too, by revealing the killer was an animal--just a dumb act of nature, as it were. And by way of comparison, we should note that the other times the Canon provided us with animal killers, they were either trained beasts used by vile villains, or they were lashing out at villains trying to harm them. In Lion's Mane, the jellyfish may have well as been a bolt of lightning, or a falling boulder. It wasn't part of any criminal or shameful actions--it was just a random, fatal accident. Holmes may as well have been an insurance claims adjuster.

That ending--it was just an accident--only serves to highlight some of the story's strained coincidences, which a better ending might have kept hidden from us. If it wasn't the day after a big storm; if some students hadn't just happened to be kept from swimming that morning; if Fitzroy didn't happen to have a weak heart...remove any link in the unlikely chain, and either McPherson doesn't die, or someone else gets stung but survives, or there are witnesses to tell us what happened. So, without such strained manipulation of events by Doyle, no mystery.

Sure, arcane coincidences are often involved in explaining how accidents happened--but this is mystery fiction, and we expect a stronger resolution to a mystery than a shrug and, "well, nature is dangerous, I guess." It suddenly removers us from a moral universe, why people are responsible for theirs (an others') fates, and justice can come into play--even if Holmes did sometimes play a bit fast and loose with the concept. In detective fiction there usually is, whether we agree with it or not, a moral, a viewpoint. Lion's Mane robs us of that, a little bit, with a moral of "well, sometimes shit just happens, even if innocent people are almost arrested for it. Societal rules mean nothing if a giant jellyfish gets blown into your cove."

Which may not be a problem for you. But I suspect it is, because, as I said earlier, this is a pretty good story. But a lot of people dismiss it. In part it's because it appears in the little-respect Case-Book. In part, it's because it's a Holmes-narrated story, and we've been told they're no good.

But also, I think it's because it's the second tale in a row where the was no human mystery, and no villain to punish. Few have objected to "the snake did it" or "the horse did it," as resolutions to other mysteries. But with "Cyanea capillata did it," it's a revelation that bothers us, because it ultimately says, "Sometimes people just die in stupid ways, and there's nothing you can do about it, and no one to catch punish." How McPherson died was a mystery, but it wasn't a mystery story, despite all the trappings.

OTHER TRIFLES AND OBSERVATIONS:

**I do think this story was much better written than its predecessor, Blanched Soldier.

I like to think that Doyle soon saw that Soldier was too cramped, too non-engaging to work, so he loosened up "Holmes'" writing-style considerably.

Of course, there are perfectly good in-story reasons to explain this. In Soldier, we're not sure exactly when in his life Holmes has put pen to paper. In Lion's Mane, though, we're quite clear that he's been in retirement for some time. Perhaps this has freed his mind a bit, literarily. It's also possible that Watson, having read Soldier, passed on some tips to Holmes on how to make a story more interesting for the reader.

But whatever meta explanation you'd like to give, Mane is not only a clearly better read than Soldier, but there are definitely bits which do show us things from Holmes' perspective rather than Watson's, and that makes for some very interesting tidbits which I'll try to mention as we skip through the story.

**So the two mysteries that Holmes narrates, with no Watson present, just happen to be medical mysteries? What the heck, Sir Arthur?

While the good doctor may not have been an expert on tropical diseases, it's certainly possible that he had encountered leprosy-sufferers during his travels, and perhaps he might have had some valuable input into this case (although Holmes had it solved 12 seconds in...)

And in this case, Watson might not have had any knowledge of jellyfish attacks. But since a part of this mystery was "how did Fitzroy die," Watson's opinion could hardly have been less valuable than the anonymous idiot doctor who testified at the inquest.

**This is also the second of two stories were people were killed by poisonous animals and left confusing dying words...

They were slurred and indistinct, but to my ear the last of them, which burst in a shriek from his lips, were "the Lion's Mane." It was utterly irrelevant and unintelligible, and yet I could twist the sound into no other sense.

I guess I shouldn't criticize people who are dying in intense agony, especially McPherson, who clearly had no idea what it was that killed him.

Still, if a victim could merely have blurted out "It was a snake!!' instead of "Oh my God! Helen! It was the band! The speckled band!", that might have made solving the murder a tiny bit easier. Ditto with Fitzroy's "the Lion's Mane"...maybe something like "In the lagoon!"?

All I'm saying is, practice your dying words, people. You can save detectives a whole lot of time rounding up your killers if you choose more carefully!

**Holmes: "I had given myself up entirely to that soothing life of Nature for which I had so often yearned during the long years spent amid the gloom of London."

A lot of people see that as, if not a contradiction of something Holmes said earlier, than at least a seemingly out of character attitude.

But we should remember--this is Sherlock himself writing. So any inconsistency comes from Watson's portrayal. It's possible that Holmes never expressed this desire to John, or that John never reported it to us.

And perhaps the years spent without Watson's partnership had taken a toll on the detective, and changed his attitude about London.

Regardless, this is certainly no reason to go about claiming the story "must" be non-canonical just because we learned something new about our hero from his own mouth.

**Holmes: "My house is lonely. I, my old housekeeper, and my bees have the estate all to ourselves."

It should be noted that, pre- or post-retirement, Holmes never took another flatmate besides Watson...

**Again, a new perspective on Holmes from the detective himself:

It was impossible to work upon so delightful a day, and I strolled out before breakfast to enjoy the exquisite air...Summer and winter he went for his swim, and, as I am a swimmer myself, I have often joined [McPherson].

Sherlock is more social and more outdoorsy than Watson portrayed him, it seems.

**A point where Watson's presence might have helped:

He was obviously dying. Those glazed sunken eyes and dreadful livid cheeks could mean nothing else...His back was covered with dark red lines as though he had been terribly flogged by a thin wire scourge. The instrument with which this punishment had been inflicted was clearly flexible, for the long, angry weals curved round his shoulders and ribs. There was blood dripping down his chin, for he had bitten through his lower lip in the paroxysm of his agony. His drawn and distorted face told how terrible that agony had been.

Now, I'm no doctor, obviously, but I have had a jellyfish sting plenty of times as a youth. Nothing as big as this Cyanea capillata. But still, ouch enough. Yet even given "dark lines as though he had been flogged," the flesh likely wouldn't have been actually torn, as almost any type of actual flogging would accomplished.

Perhaps having had a medical companion on hand, someone who might have recognized the symptoms of a poisoning by venom, might have made short work of this mystery. At the very least, he could have put paid to the notion of some type of "scourging" that didn't even rip the flesh.

**Our first suspect:

Murdoch was the mathematical coach at the establishment, a tall, dark, thin man, so taciturn and aloof that none can be said to have been his friend. He seemed to live in some high abstract region of surds and conic sections, with little to connect him with ordinary life.

Interesting, isn't it, that Sherlock describes the dour teacher in terms that Watson often used to describe him?

Given that Murdoch was a math teacher and a murder suspect, I'm surprised that no one has floated a theory that he was really Moriarty in disguise, and had trained a jellyfish to commit a diabolical murder...

**Dog abuse:

On one occasion, being plagued by a little dog belonging to McPherson, he had caught the creature up and hurled it through the plate-glass window, an action for which Stackhurst would certainly have given him his dismissal had he not been a very valuable teacher.

You know, he could have been the most valuable teacher in the world, and 99.99% of all institutions still would have sacked Murdoch instantly for that.

Even if the dog were "plaguing" him, that hardly justifies tossing the pooch through a window. And it's pretty hard for me to see most pet owners getting over that enough to actually become friends with the canine tosser:

But for a year or more Murdoch has been as near to McPherson as he ever could be to anyone. He is not of a very sympathetic disposition by nature."

"So I understand. I seem to remember your telling me once about a quarrel over the ill-usage of a dog."

"That blew over all right."

"But left some vindictive feeling, perhaps."

"No, no, I am sure they were real friends."

"Real friends" after trying to kill my dog? Inconceivable!

**Wait just one minute! McPherson wades into the pool, and is stung all over by the hidden jellyfish. He is dying, in unendurable agony.

But he takes the time to put his on his coat, trousers and shoes before climbing the path?!?!

That may be taking the modesty of the era too far. If he hadn't taken to time to half-dress, he might have reached Holmes with time enough to actually explain, instead of blurting out a cryptic phrase...

**One of the bigger hiccups in the mystery is: why did Holmes assume Fitzroy hadn't bathed? Simply because he was (partly) dressed and his towel was dry? "Had the body been found in the water I could hardly have missed it. It was the towel which misled me."

As many have observed, given that he had never used his towel, McPherson would almost certainly have been at least still damp, and it's difficult to conceive of the great detective missing this, dry towel or no.

Still, we're told that Fitzroy "had not been on the beach more than a quarter of an hour at the most." Allowing a little flexibility in that time, it's possible that he had mostly dried in the sun and morning air as he struggled up the cliff. And giving the hideousness of his death, and trace remaining water could have been dismissed as sweat produced in the "infernal agony."

**But even if you assume McPherson hadn't swam, Holmes still should have searched the "lagoon," right? If you're committed to the theory that some "flexible scourge" had been used to flail Fitzroy, isn't it possible that the killer might have hidden it in the water? Just because you think that Fitzroy hadn't gone in the water, doesn't mean the alleged killer hadn't.

**Holmes has become much better at describing characters: "Anderson, the village constable, a big, ginger-moustached man of the slow, solid Sussex breed -- a breed which covers much good sense under a heavy, silent exterior."

**When your teacher is a dick: "Ian Murdoch held them back," said he. "He would insist upon some algebraic demonstration before breakfast."

Algebra before breakfast? Human rights violation!!

**Perhaps Sherlock wasn't as familiar with the community as he thought, as he is completely unaware of the existence of Maud Bellamy, despite her apparent local fame: "Everyone knows her. She is the beauty of the neighbourhood --a real beauty, Holmes, who would draw attention everywhere."

Yet it seems that she was more observant, and recognized Holmes even though he had never seen her before: "It seems that she already knew me by sight, for she turned to me at the end..."

**Tempers are really on edge at The Gables:

"What were you doing there?" he asked.

Murdoch's face flushed with anger. "I am your subordinate, sir, under your roof. I am not aware that I owe you any account of my private actions."

Stackhurst's nerves were near the surface after all he had endured. Otherwise, perhaps, he would have waited. Now he lost his temper completely. "In the circumstances your answer is pure impertinence, Mr. Murdoch."

"Your own question might perhaps come under the same heading."

"This is not the first time that I have had to overlook your insubordinate ways. It will certainly be the last. You will kindly make fresh arrangements for your future as speedily as you can."

Well, that got out of hand quickly, didn't it?

Still, a colleague has just been (apparently) murdered, so perhaps it's not surprising that raw emotions quickly broke through into what should have been a civilized conversation...

**So much for Holmes' not forming theories before all the facts are in:

The one thing that impressed itself forcibly upon my mind was that Mr. Ian Murdoch was taking the first chance to open a path of escape from the scene of the crime. Suspicion, vague and nebulous, was now beginning to take outline in my mind. AND Again the shadow round this strange man seemed to me to be taking more definite shape. His record must be examined. His rooms must be privately searched.

Still, such theorizing is preferable to Holmes keeping the reader in the dark until the bitter end.

Still, searching a man's rooms on "vague and nebulous" suspicions? I guess that, as the rooms belonged to The Gables institution, and it wasn't the police doing the searching, no violation of Murdoch's rights occurred...

**More Victorian/Edwardian morality on the role of young women in society from Tom Bellamy:

My son here...is of one mind with me that Mr. McPherson's attentions to Maud were insulting. Yes, sir, the word 'marriage' was never mentioned, and yet there were letters and meetings, and a great deal more of which neither of us could approve.

Heavens--letters AND meetings?!?! How scandalous! Women must be protected from any attention from men unless marriage is discussed? I would have loved to see him try to raise a daughter in the era of email and Twitter and being with boys in school and...

And later, Bellamy declares, "I object to my girl picking up with men outside her own station." So sexist and classist. King jerk, is all I'm saying.

**And it wasn't just Tom Bellamy who was a bit retrograde in his feelings towards unapproved couplings, as Maud tells us. "We were engaged to be married, and we only kept it secret because
Fitzroy's uncle, who is very old and said to be dying, might have
disinherited him if he had married against his wish."

This isn't the first time we have seen people hide relationships to avoid rich relatives finding out and disinheriting them. For me, it would have to be one hell of a potential bequest to get me to hide my love life like then. Then again, you do see people hide their relationships for all sorts of reasons, even today, including a fear of upsetting relatives.

One interesting question: why would the uncle have objected to this match? Bellamy clearly feels that Maud was above Fitzroy's station--so wouldn't he have been marrying up? Why would the uncle have resisted that?

Then again, we're told that Bellamy "was a fisherman to start with." Perhaps Uncle Bob objected because he felt that money didn't grant social status, and nouveau riche or not, he didn't want his heir to marry the child of a mere fisherman.

Damn, class and social strata are funny things...

**Holmes describing Maud:

Who could have imagined that so rare a flower would grow from such a root and in such an atmosphere? Women have seldom been an attraction to me, for my brain has always governed my heart, but I could not look upon her perfect clear-cut face, with all the soft freshness of the downlands in her delicate colouring, without realizing that no young man would cross her path unscathed....Maud Bellamy will always remain in my memory as a most complete and remarkable woman.

Again, many have thought this completely uncharacteristic of Sherlock. But this is the first time that we have Holmes himself describing a beautiful woman to us.

This is another case of Watson not filtering things through his perspective for us. Good on Doyle for not making everything a carbon copy of how Watson would have described Holmes' reaction.

**Holmes: I turned over the paper. "This never came by post. How did you get it?"

How did he know that? It's never explained, and I not sure how he knows. Had the paper never been folded, and was too big to have fit into any envelope? But the note was "crumpled" when she pulled it out...?

**Holmes:

You have known what it was to be in a nightmare in which you feel that there is some all-important thing for which you search and which you know is there, though it remains forever just beyond your reach.

As someone who is finding my memory deteriorating (seemingly by the day), I sympathize with this, and admire Holmes' self-honesty.

**How badly is Holmes losing his sharpness?

You will know, or Watson has written in vain, that I hold a vast store of out-of-the-way knowledge without scientific system, but very available for the needs of my work. My mind is like a crowded box-room with packets of all sorts stowed away therein -- so many that I may well have but a vague perception of what was there. I had known that there was something which might bear upon this matter. It was still vague, but at least I knew how I could make it clear.

This does seem to contradict Holmes' earlier descriptions of how he preserved his mental sharpness.

But then again, that was Holmes when he first met Watson, and now Holmes is much older, in retirement, and the discipline he alluded to in Study In Scarlet may be fading, either through relaxation--or deteriorating faculties.

And once again, this is Holmes himself telling us, and not something being filtered through his Boswell. Perhaps Watson misunderstood/misreported earlier...

**The joys of policing a small town, as put forth by Inspector Bardle: "Yes, sir. There is really no one else when you come to think of it. That's the advantage of this solitude. We narrow it down to a very small compass. If he did not do it, then who did?"

Compare, of course, to Holmes' famous admonition about remote country living in Copper Beeches:

"Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of a mind
with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to
my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are
impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which
comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with
which crime may be committed there."

"Good heavens!" I cried. "Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?"

"They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson,
founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London
do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and
beautiful countryside."

"You horrify me!"

"But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do
in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile
that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow,
does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then
the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint
can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the
dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled
for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law.
Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may
go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. Had this
lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I should
never have had a fear for her. It is the five miles of country which
makes the danger.

Not to mention, of course, the the inspector completely overlooks the possibility of someone from outside the community coming to commit a crime...

**Unacceptable inquest:

"Have you examined the marks?" I asked. "I have seen them. So has the doctor." "But I have examined them very carefully with a lens. They have peculiarities."

Good gosh, I don't expect a 1907 Surrey doctor to necessarily have the capability to run a "tox screen" and discover jellyfish venom.

But to not have "examined the marks very carefully with a lens"??? What did this quack do, just shrug his shoulders and say, "Well, he's dead, I guess!"????

**Alcohol was apparently the most potent cure against jellyfish toxin:

"Brandy! Brandy!" he gasped, and fell groaning upon the sofa..."Yes, yes, brandy!" he cried. "The man is at his last gasp. It was all I could do to bring him here. He fainted twice upon the way." Half a tumbler of the raw spirit brought about a wondrous change...More and more brandy was poured down his throat, each fresh dose bringing him back to life.

Also, the account from Holmes' book said a victim "gulped down brandy, a whole bottleful, and it seems to have saved his life."

Of course, it was common in the day to see liquor as a restorative, and especially brandy. And it's not the first time we've seen it used in these stories.

**The reveal:

"Cyanea!" I cried. "Cyanea! Behold the Lion's Mane!"

The strange object at which I pointed did indeed look like a tangled mass torn from the mane of a lion. It lay upon a rocky shelf some three feet under the water, a curious waving, vibrating, hairy creature with streaks of silver among its yellow tresses. It pulsated with a slow, heavy dilation and contraction.

The jellyfish did it...

**That was actually a real book, a real author, and an actual passage that Holmes read to us:

It is Out of Doors, by the famous observer, J. G. Wood. Wood himself very nearly perished from contact with this vile creature, so he wrote with a very full knowledge. Cyanea capillata is the miscreant's full name, and he can be as dangerous to life as, and far more painful than, the bite of the cobra.

Wood also wrote about jellyfish attacks in other books, so they obvioously made a huge impression on him.

**Holmes: "I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles."

A retentive memory that failed to remember for over a week...

**Holmes: "That phrase 'the Lion's Mane' haunted my mind. I knew that I had seen it somewhere in an unexpected context."

So, then, it's remarkably convenient for solving this mystery that those were Fitzroy's last words...

**Stackhurst and Murdoch make up:

Stackhurst held out his hand. "Our nerves have all been at concert-pitch," said he. "Forgive what is past, Murdoch. We shall understand each other better in the future."

Awww...

SHERLOCK HOLMES WILL RETURN IN--THE ADVENTURE OF THE RETIRED COLOURMAN!!

Sunday, December 6, 2015

All of us have thought, "I can do X better than he" at some point in our life.

It's part of human nature, to apprise our own skills more highly than those of another, even if we don't actually have any evidence or experience to back that up.

But when it come time to put brush to canvas, as it were, well, it can be a rude awakening.

Which brings us to The Adventure Of The Blanched Soldier.

Many, many times, Sherlock Holmes has criticized John Watson's written accounts of their cases. Well, the shoe is on the other foot, now, and the results are not exactly to Holmes' credit.

Let's step back to the real world, for a second, away from the "gentle fiction." Of course Holmes and Watson aren't real. So the decision to have Sherlock take up the pen himself comes squarely down to the creator and author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Nearing the end of his 40-year run on the character, Sir Arthur should be commended for trying to keep things fresh and interesting, to shake up the formula. It would have been remarkably easy to coast at this late point in his life, as he approached his 70th birthday. You merely have to travel to a modern bookstore to see how many series of crime fiction continue on and on, with no real changes to the basic premise, and a cookie cutter approach to each new novel. Or, a "co-writer" is hired to do most of the actual work while the creator keeps his name in large print and continues to rake in the bucks.

So props to Doyle. Why not, in your 52nd Holmes short story, try something new, by having Holmes himself narrate? Why not shake up the formula a little bit?

That leaves us two questions, I think, outside of the quality of the mystery itself (which I will try to tackle below). First, does Sir Arthur do a good job of altering his usual writing style, to make it convincing that a different "author" "writing" this story? Secondly, does leaving Watson aside turn out to be a good choice for storytelling purpose?

As to the first question, I think the answer is a resounding "yes." The prose and narrative style Doyle employs here is quite different than that he used when Watson was the putative author. Take, for example, the very first line of the story: "The ideas of my friend Watson, though limited, are exceedingly pertinacious."

Well, that's just not a sentence you would hear Watson writing, is it? Aside from the vocabulary, that's just not the way John Watson would start a story, is it? Watson might express a similar thought, but only as a way of trying to justify his decision why to write up the current mystery, or to give us a greater picture of the subject of his admiration, Sherlock Holmes. And think about this:

Perhaps I have rather invited this persecution, since I have often had occasion to point out to him how superficial are his own accounts and to accuse him of pandering to popular taste instead of confining himself rigidly to facts and figures. "Try it yourself, Holmes!" he has retorted, and I am compelled to admit that, having taken my pen in my hand, I do begin to realize that the matter must be presented in such a way as may interest the reader.

While Watson passed along Holmes' opinion often enough, it was almost never to defend himself, but to illuminate Sherlock. And it rarely came in the story's preamble. But here Holmes, rather than introducing the actual tale, instead of leading us into the mystery, is writing about writing! And making himself the subject, something Watson was loathe to do when he had the writing reins.

Another way that Doyle makes Holmes' writing differ from Watson's is by having having Sherlock's be much less descriptive, especially of people. When Dodd arrives at Baker Street, for example, Holmes describes him thusly: "I had my visit from Mr. James M. Dodd, a big, fresh, sunburned, upstanding Briton." That's it! Watson would have taken at least two more sentences to fully describe Dodd's physical appearance.

Another example: When Holmes finally meets the colonel, all he gives us is "bristling beard and twisted features, as terrible an old man as ever I have seen." Contrast with the way Dodd had described Emsworth much more interestingly, as "a huge, bow-backed man with a smoky skin and a straggling gray beard,
seated behind his littered desk. A red-veined nose jutted out like a
vulture's beak, and two fierce gray eyes glared at me from under tufted
brows." The latter is obviously a much more Watsonian description, but Holmes seems to pass along such information only when transcribing the words of other people.

So, if you were to ask my humble opinion, Sir Arthur does a fine job of differentiating between Watson as biographer and Holmes as autobiographer. But does that work for a Holmes story?

There are two major ways that it fails. First, the drier, less descriptive prose of Sherlock Holmes is far less interesting to read than Watson's. Holmes may have felt that all of the extraneous detail (and humanity) that Watson included in each tale was distracting. But as I have noted here before, Watson gave us a sense of time, a sense of place, a window in to the culture of the era. Holmes is utterly uninterested in such details, unless they're key to solving his mystery, and so he gives them little attention. It may be more direct, but it is far less involving, far less immersive then the stories as Watson told them.

The second, and perhaps more important, is that Watson, by his mere presence, was able to pace a story better, and keep thee tale as a whole flowing.

For example, Watson would often question Holmes about his theories of the case. And even when Holmes chose to be cryptic, still the interplay between the characters was worth reading...and even when being deliberately vague, Holmes would give us some clues to his insights.

In Blanched Patient, though, without Watson to banter with, Holmes takes being opaque to heights that hurt the readers' interest. Once he's solved the case, before even getting up from his chair, this is all he gives the reader:

Such was the problem which my visitor laid before me. It presented, as
the astute reader will have already perceived, few difficulties in its
solution, for a very limited choice of alternatives must get to the root
of the matter. Still, elementary as it was, there were points of
interest and novelty about it which may excuse my placing it upon
record.

Dry, dull. Not a hint of what he's thinking. It's tough for the audience to "play along" with the author when the author shows no interest in playing whatsoever. Holmes says, "The narratives of Watson have accustomed the reader, no doubt, to the
fact that I do not waste words or disclose my thoughts while a case is
actually under consideration." But that's not true at all!

If Watson had been along, the doctor would have offered some theories, which Holmes would shoot down with explanations that enlightened the reader; or Watson would have expressed befuddlement, and Holmes would have remonstrated him while offering "teasers" about what he thought were the important clues. When Watson was present, Sherlock was interested in trying to teach him, to bring him along with his thought processes, which helps the reader.. Without Watson, Holmes shows not the least interest in helping the reader along.

And frankly, as a writer Watson was better at pacing a story, at breaking up the large expanses of exposition that began many a Holmes story. When Dodd tells his tale, it goes on forever--11 pages of nearly uninterrupted, monologued exposition. And, to quote Holmes from elsewhere in the story, "here it is that I miss my Watson. By cunning questions and ejaculations of wonder he could elevate my simple art, which is but systematized common sense, into a prodigy." We don't get the questions or ejaculations, or Watson's narrative on how he feels about the tale that is being spun in front of him. There is no nudging, no pressing for additional details (except "what newspaper was it?"), no description of Holmes' demeanor during the interview. This is where Watson's presence is missed the most, because he would have broken up this massive block of dictation for us, and presented this as a story, and not as unbroken testimony. (This happens, albeit to a lesser extent, at the end, when young Emsworth tells his story in yet another long unbroken monologue.)

So, for this story at least, the use of Holmes as "author" is a bit of a failure. While Doyle does a fine job of presenting the story as if Sherlock had written it, that style is so bereft of pacing, of dramatic flow, of interaction between characters, it reads more like an overlong treatise than a mystery story. We can applaud the attempt, while thinking the results were perhaps much more lackluster than Sir Arthur would have liked.OTHER TRIFLES AND OBSERVATIONS:

**So the first story without Watson, and you decide to do a "medical" mystery?!? *Face palm*

Not that there's anything inherently wrong with the medical mystery. Heck, the hero of the television series House, M.D. was based on Sherlock Holmes.

But--and this is entirely my personal predilections--I don't really care for "medical" shows. You know how some people have a problem with Star Trek "technobabble"? Well, that's pretty much how a medical-jargon based mystery feels to me--all the terminology might as well be Greek (or Klingon), and makes my eyes glaze over.

Again, that's just my personal tastes. But it proves a double disadvantage in this case. In an episode of House, you have the head doctor constantly debating the meanings of symptoms and what could be causing them with his colleagues. So at the very least, the medically unenlightened (me!) can follow along. But in Blanched Soldier, there is none of that back and forth, none of that discussing and dismissing of theories. Holmes keeps all the cards to himself...he won't even tell us that the gent he brings along is a doctor, so we don't even know that it's a medical mystery to begin with!!

So when Holmes pulls out the solution at the end--it's leprosy!!--it feels like a cheat, a magic trick akin to his unveiling of cabby as the killer in Study In Scarlet, something that comes completely out of left field, without any basis in what we've read so far. It feels more like a feat of prestidigitation than a series of deductions, because Holmes (and Doyle) choose to keep everything from the reader until the end.

I'll accept an argument that contemporary readers might have been more aware of leprosy, and thus would have been better able to follow along with Holmes. But for modern readers? Literally the only clues we're given is that Emsworth served in South Africa, and his brow was terribly pale. I don't expect every mystery to be a "play fair," but that's asking too much of us.

So, not such a good mystery, I think...

**"Oh, it's not leprosy, is "pseudo-leprosy," which is not contagious and it's curable" sure as hell sounds like a risible, made-up happy ending, doesn't it?

It is often my lot to bring ill-tidings and seldom good," said he. "This
occasion is the more welcome. It is not leprosy." "What?" "A
well-marked case of pseudo-leprosy or ichthyosis, a scale-like affection
of the skin, unsightly, obstinate, but possibly curable, and certainly
noninfective.

But is it coincidence? Are there not subtle forces at work of which we
know little? Are we assured that the apprehension from which this young
man has no doubt suffered terribly since his exposure to its contagion
may not produce a physical effect which simulates that which it fears?

The less we think about that, the better off we are, I think...

**Holmes: "The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association. I was alone."

I try not to spend too much time worrying about chronology, or Watson's marriage(s).

But almost every Sherlockian agrees that Watson's marriage to Mary Morstan happened more than a decade before this story was set. So if Watson has married again--or for that matter, if he is still married to Mary, and she has just returned from somewhere--this clearly cannot be the first time that Watson has "deserted" Holmes, selfish or not.

Or was Watson fudging dates even more significantly than we had thought?

**Holmes has quite a compliment for Watson...

Speaking of my old friend and biographer, I would take this
opportunity to remark that if I burden myself with a companion in my
various little inquiries it is not done out of sentiment or caprice, but
it is that Watson has some remarkable characteristics of his own to
which in his modesty he has given small attention amid his exaggerated
estimates of my own performances.

but then he has to go and turn it into a left-handed compliment, or even an insult:

...A confederate
who foresees your conclusions and course of action is always dangerous,
but one to whom each development comes as a perpetual surprise, and to
whom the future is always a closed book, is indeed an ideal helpmate.

Oh, Sherlock...

**One advantage of having Sherlock as our narrator is that we can get actual confirmation of some of his motives for how he conducts his interviews.

For example, "It is my habit to sit with my back to the window and to place my
visitors in the opposite chair, where the light falls full upon them." and "I have found it wise to impress clients with a sense of power, and so I gave him some of my conclusions."

**Dodd's initial reason for concern:

He was my mate -- and that means a good deal in the Army....I got one letter from the hospital at Cape Town and one from Southampton. Since then not a word -- not one word, Mr. Holmes, for six months and more, and he my closest pal...He was a good lad, and he would not drop a pal like that.

Hmmm. I know Holmes is (theoretically) transcribing what Dodd says. But given Sherlock's earlier lamentations about Watson's "deserting" him, do I detect a bit of a jibe at Watson, who did "drop a pal?"

**Dodd: "Tuxbury Old Hall is inaccessible -- five miles from anywhere. There was no trap at the station, so I had to walk, carrying my suitcase, and it was nearly dark before I arrived."

I know that, to the older Emsworth, Dodd was an unwelcome visitor. But making a guest walk five miles, while carrying his own luggage?!? How very unspeakably ill-mannered! Surely that would have lead to unwelcome gossip and hurt the family's reputation!

Of course, the colonel had no problem providing a trap when he kick Dodd out...

**Dodd again: "There was a butler, old Ralph, who seemed about the same age as the house, and there was his wife, who might have been older. She had been Godfrey's nurse, and I had heard him speak of her as second only to his mother in his affections, so I was drawn to her in spite of her queer appearance. The mother I liked also -- a gentle little white mouse of a woman. It was only the colonel himself whom I barred."

Perhaps it's just speculation, but Dodd seems only to like those he perceives as non-threatening...or easily cowed? Problems with authority?

**Dodd describes Emsworth's suspicious demeanor:

'Well, sir,' said he in a rasping voice, 'I should be interested to know the real reasons for this visit.'

"I answered that I had explained them in my letter to his wife. "

'Yes, yes, you said that you had known Godfrey in Africa. We have, of course, only your word for that.'

Again, this may seem unbelievably rude for the era.

Although, given some of the crazy schemes we've seen con men and thieves uses to get access to houses that we've seen in the Canon, can we really say that the old man is wrong to be so untrusting?

**Upper class insults: 'Many people, Mr. Dodd,' said he, 'would take
offence at your infernal pertinacity and would think that this
insistence had reached the point of damned impertinence.'

Oh, snap!!

**Top melodrama:

" 'Listen,' I said. 'You are going to answer one question before you leave if I have to hold you all night. Is Godfrey dead?" "He could not face my eyes. He was like a man hypnotized The answer was dragged from his lips. It was a terrible and unexpected one. " 'I wish to God he was!' he cried, and, tearing himself free he dashed from the room.

"Clearly my poor friend had become involved in some criminal or, at the least, disreputable transaction which touched the family honour. That stern old man had sent his son away and hidden him from the world lest some scandal should come to light."

Holmes dismisses that:

No unsolved crime had been reported from that district. I was sure of that. If it were some crime not yet discovered, then clearly it would be to the interest of the family to get rid of the delinquent and send him abroad rather than keep him concealed at home.

Well, perhaps. But what if it were a non-local crime that had been committed--something elsewhere in England, or during his travels home, or even in South Africa--that was the reason his family was trying to conceal him?

**The shame of leprosy:

There was something shocking about the man, Mr. Holmes. It wasn't merely that ghastly face glimmering as white as cheese in the darkness. It was more subtle than that -- something slinking, something furtive, something guilty -- something very unlike the frank, manly lad that I had known. It left a feeling of horror in my mind.

Just the thought that he had leprosy made Geoffrey "slinking, furtive and guilty."

**Holmes: "It happened that at the moment I was clearing up the case which my friend Watson has described as that of the Abbey School, in which the Duke of Greyminster was so deeply involved."

Wait, is Holmes referring to The Adventure Of The Priory School? But Watson was clearly a bachelor and living in Baker Street then: "We have had some dramatic entrances and exits upon our small stage at Baker Street, but I cannot recollect anything more sudden and startling than the first appearance of Thorneycroft Huxtable, M.A., Ph.D., etc."

Most chronologists place the Priory School in 1901, and Holmes definitively tells us that this case takes place in 1903. So is he referring to the same case? Are the Abbey School and the Duke of Greyminster really Priory School and the Duke of Holderness? Are there some issues from that case that still needed "clearing up" two years later? Or is this some other case entirely? And if so, how was Watson involved, if he had "abandoned" Holmes?

**Another apocryphal case: "I had also a commission from the Sultan of Turkey which called for immediate action, as political consequences of the gravest kind might arise from its neglect."

**And one more untold tale: "I was able once to do him a professional service, and he is ready to advise as a friend rather than as a specialist. His name is Sir James Saunders."

**A typical Holmes trick, this time with the master narrating his moves rather than Watson:

I have, as my friend Watson may have remarked, an abnormally acute set of senses, and a faint but incisive scent was apparent. It seemed to centre on the hall table. I turned, placed my hat there, knocked it off, stooped to pick it up, and contrived to bring my nose within a foot of the gloves.

**Despite Holmes' reputation, detectives were clearly held is disrepute.

Emsworth: "As to you, sir," turning upon me, "I extend the same warning to you. I am familiar with your ignoble profession, but you must take your reputed talents to some other field. There is no opening for them here."

Ignoble? Snap again!!

**Of course, if the colonel were so knowledgeable about what detectives do, he wouldn't have been so surprised by Holmes figuring out the truth..."How do you know?" he gasped, sitting down heavily in his chair. "It is my business to know things. That is my trade."

** "Well, it's not a long story to tell," says Geoffrey.

But it takes another 3 pages of uninterrupted exposition!! Man, this story is nothing but pacing problems!!

**Odd weather description, as apparently a cold day in South Africa is worse than a cold day in London (or Michigan): "You remember the kind of numb cold which used to come at evening, a deadly, sickening sort of cold, very different from a crisp healthy frost."

**Given what he thought he had contracted, you'd think that Geoffrey could have been a little bit more sympathetic in his description of others so afflicted:

In front of me was standing a small, dwarf-like man with a huge, bulbous head, who was jabbering excitedly in Dutch, waving two horrible hands which looked to me like brown sponges. Behind him stood a group of people who seemed to be intensely amused by the situation, but a chill came over me as I looked at them. Not one of them was a normal human being. Every one was twisted or swollen or disfigured in some strange way. The laughter of these strange monstrosities was a dreadful thing to hear.

His appearance was certainly extraordinary. One could see
that he had indeed been a handsome man with clear-cut features
sunburned by an African sun, but mottled in patches over this darker
surface were curious whitish patches which had bleached his skin.

Not to make light of ichthyosis, but that really doesn't sound nearly as horrifying as Dodd described...

**Well, at least the family hired a doctor?

Under pledge of secrecy, Mr. Kent, who is a surgeon, was prepared to stay with me...

May I ask, sir, if you are an authority on such complaints, which are, I understand, tropical or semi-tropical in their nature?"

"I have the ordinary knowledge of the educated medical man," he observed with some stiffness.

Geez, at least get a specialist to look at him?? Especially since his diagnosis was, well, really wrong? Was the family shame so bad that they couldn't at least get a, well, good doctor?

**Geoffrey: "But absolute secrecy was necessary, or even in this quiet countryside there would have been an outcry, and I should have been dragged to my horrible doom."

Really? You're expecting a lynch mob? Well, maybe. I can't speak to the general British populace's (or authority's) fear of leprosy in 1903. But we've been told how isolated the estate was--5 miles from anything else! Was he any more of a treat to public health than typhoid or cholera patients?

**See, it wasn't just Watson making that up: "That process," said I, "starts upon the supposition that when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

** Good to know: "It is not illegal, however, to keep a lunatic upon private premises so long as there is a qualified person in attendance and that the authorities have been duly notified."

I wonder if that's still the case...

**Of course, when one is afraid of torch-wielding villagers or the like, you have to wonder how impressed they'll be by "it's only pseudo-leprosy!!" Which is probably the reason the term fell out of favor. Still, it's hard to see the Emsworth's fear of medical shaming allowing even the "safe" ichtyosis diagnosis to be made public...

Sunday, November 15, 2015

We've all experienced this, haven't we? We go home for a family gathering, and a favorite uncle or cousin we've long admired is there. Our ideal is shattered, though, when the relative suddenly blurts out something hateful and racist, and suddenly you're disillusioned and uncomfortable and you have no idea what to do.

Which brings us to The Adventure of The Three Gables.

One of the reasons this post is so late is that I have no idea what to do here.

Like when your beloved grandfather starts dropping anti-Semitic comments during Thanksgiving dinner...what do you do? Try and correct him? Start a big argument that ruins dinner for everybody? Press too hard and you find out that many more of your loved ones harbor similar disturbing prejudices? Keep eating and stew in silence? Stop accepting invitations to family gatherings?

Granted, Sherlock Holmes (and Watson) are fictional characters, but in some ways the sting is just as bad. To see a character you admire, the epitome of intellect and reason and not letting unwarranted prejudices cloud your reason, speaking and behaving in way that you feel is racist--it jars. It hurts.

Now, as a middle-aged middle-class white male, I am spectacularly unequipped to speak intelligently on such issues. Anything I can add to the discussion would be as an outsider dilettante, right?

And there are some halfhearted defenses I could try to make of Holmes' behavior in this story. "All his jabs weren't directed at blacks in general, just at Steve Dixie. He wasn't generalizing, he wasn't being racist--Dixie really did smell bad!" Or "Holmes didn't really feel that way--he was trying to use those comments to get under Dixie's skin, to throw him off guard and get him to blurt out information about his boss!" Or "Holmes was just as rude to Sam Merton the boxer in Mazarin Stone! He's not racist, he just hates dumb bruisers in general!" Or "...but The Adventure Of The Yellow Face!!"

And they even be some glimmers of truth, and perhaps mitigation, in those arguments. But Watson himself is also not terribly pleasant in some of his descriptions of Mr. Dixie, and in his transcription of his dialogue. So we can't just dismiss complaints about this story out-of-hand with rhetorical tricks. As regular reader Arynne said, "[Holmes] is a racist asshole in Three Gables!" It's difficult for me to reject that conclusion.

Perhaps a better question is--should we be surprised? After all, even in real life, people are terribly complicated, and inconsistent in ways that would never pass muster if we analyzed them the way we analyzed literary works. Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, held views on race relations that, while common at the time, would have right-thinking people reject the entirety of his career if spoken today. People can be more than one thing at once, even contradictory things.

That can be true in literature and entertainment, too. Without getting into all of the controversy over the release of the "sequel" to To Kill A Mockingbird, Go Set A Watchman tells of an Atticus Finch in his older days who maybe isn't quite the perfect idol of liberalism 9th grade English classes (and Gregory Peck) have made him to be for decades. He attends meetings of racist organizations! He for "states' rights!" Despite his defense of Tom Robinson, he doesn't support integration or full civil rights for blacks!!

Good Lord, you would have thought they were murdering puppies on Main Street, so great was the anguished outcry by people astonished that their lifetime hero maybe, just maybe, was not an icon of perfection!! How dare you tell us our heroes are complex and contradictory and...

We can see a similar thing in the original Star Trek. It was the 1960s, and they liked to make a big deal over Earth overcoming all its prejudices and hatreds. But every single episode featured the chief medical officer making racist comments about the ship's first officer. So much for racism being over...or does racism not count if you're only racist against fictional races and species? (And yes, insert all of the defenses of "they're friends" and "he's just needling Spock" you like...but then ask yourself why some of those same defenses wouldn't apply to Holmes in this story.) This and later iterations of Trek were quick to assert that everybody on a planet had the exact same culture and behavior: Tellarites are all quarrelsome, Ferengi are all greedy, Klingons are all warlike, etc. Hell, the Next Generation episode Redemption Part II has a high-ranking Star Fleet officer say that, "No one would suggest that a Klingon would be a good ship's counselor, or that a Berellian could be an engineer. They're just not suited for those positions." Even the mighty Federation, it seems, can harbor some racism (or specieism) in the future.

I can't get into the mind of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but surely he was, just as we all are, products of our time. That's not a defense, of course. And I'm not going to get so clever as to say "he was only portraying the racism of the times, he wasn't actually racist himself." Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. We can't know, though, so where does that leave us?

As I said above, I just don't know. The best I can do here is to suggest that Sherlock Holmes is as human as the rest of us. That he is vast, and contains multitudes, and some of the lesser multitudes peeked out during this story...and maybe allowing for a little bit of mitigation for the era, a little bit for the possibility that Holmes may have been trying to provoke a perp...

Yeah, Sherlock is a "racist bastard" in Three Gables. I don't think that we toss out the whole story because our hero was less than perfect this time around. We continue to admire Lincoln and Atticus Finch. We still watch Star Wars despite "I'd just as soon kiss a Wookie." And we still go to family gatherings despite Uncle Bob's occasional embarrassing moment.

That's the best I've got.

OTHER TRIFLES AND OBSERVATIONS:

**All of the above being said, this is a pretty nice little story, marred only by two things: we should have met Langdale Pike, and the ending was far too abrupt. How did Holmes explain the largesse of a world trip to Mrs. Maberley?

Otherwise, it is a fairly low stakes affair, with the whole motive revolving around that old Victorian fear of scandal. Good heavens!!

**The Granada adaptation manages to greatly raise the stakes. In the television version, Douglas Maberley actually because of the beating Isadora Klein's goons gave him. Apparently, the attack "ruptured his spleen," according to Watson, which somehow caused the pneumonia that killed him!! That was the reason she was so desperate to get the "novel"--it functioned as an accusation (and proof?) of murder!! And despite the seeming impossibility of proving that in a court of law, Holmes essentially blackmails Klein with it, by promising not to report it to the authorities if she founds Mrs. Maberley's trip, and breaks off her engagement to Duke and leave England forever!!! Which she does!!

**Man, Sir Arthur was using "Three" a lot in his stories. Three Gables, Three Garridebs, Three Students, Missing Three Quarter...you're making it very confusing for us to remember which story was which, Sir!!

**Good old Watson: "...the slight clatter which I made as I picked up the poker." Always ready to leap to Holmes' aid.

**If Holmes actually knew something of the murder of "young Perkins," why hadn't he gone to the authorities with it? Or did he just have his suspicions, which he was able to conveniently used to scare Dixie? Does he have a lot of "I suspect but can't proves" in his arsenal, ready to dispense when needed?

**Mrs. Maberley's note said, "I have had a succession of strange incidents occur to me in connection with this house." Yet, as far as we can tell, there was only one incident: someone trying to buy the house with odd conditions attached to the sale. Did other things happen, that she never bothered to tell us about? There was no sign of threats, or break-ins, or anything, right? Or was one eccentric, rich anonymous person trying to buy your house enough to justify hiring a detective?

**Then again, Mary was familiar with Holmes work: "I believe that my late husband, Mortimer Maberley, was one of your early clients." Holmes says, "it is some years since he used my services in some trifling matter."

So a minor, apocryphal case...

**Watson, architecture critic, on the house name Three Gables: "the house, a brick and timber villa, standing in its own acre of undeveloped grassland. Three small projections above. the upper windows made a feeble attempt to justify its name."

**Apparently, Douglas Maberley was the talk of the town. Holmes:

But of course all London knew him. What a magnificent creature he was!...I have never known anyone so vitally alive. He lived intensely -every fibre of him!"

One can only wonder at what inspired such fame and adoration for a minor diplomat.

**Mary: "You remember him as he was -- debonair and splendid. You did not see the moody, morose, brooding creature into which he developed. His heart was broken. In a single month I seemed to see my gallant boy turn into a worn-out cynical man."

Holmes: "A love affair -- a woman?"

Mary: "Or a fiend."

Hmmm. Does Mary know that Isadora was the one who broke Douglas' heart and spirit? That "fiend" comment suggests she knew something. It's a pity she wasn't more forthcoming. as she could have saved Holmes some time hanging around with gossip columnists!

Also? When Holmes says. "A love affair--a woman?" Is he implying that maybe it wouldn't have been a woman? That he suspected Douglas of having...ahem...other interests? It just seems odd to insert that qualifier in there, in that way, if you didn't have some reason to think that maybe it wasn't a woman...

**Of course, someone willing to considerably overpay for a house could be an indication of evil-doing. Or it could be a sign of a housing bubble with imminent economic collapse coming...

**This "Haines-Johnson" and Klein make a bit of a mistake by over-egging the offer a fair bit.

Buy the house and all the furniture for far more than market price? No problem. But language in the contract stating that she "could not legally take anything out of the house -- not even your own private possessions?" And his explanation to her, "'Well, well, some concession might be made for your personal effects. But nothing shall go out of the house unchecked," is obviously going to be unacceptable to a woman of "refinement and culture."

There should have been some way to make that contract more subtle, without forcing Mrs. Maberley to an option that anyone would see as offensive and unacceptable--not to mention immediately alerting her lawyer that something odd was going on.

**What other options existed?

Douglas effects had arrived "last week," and been untouched, "piled in a corner." Surely the wicked maid Susan knew his luggage was there, unopened. Surely she and her cronies should have known that Douglas' novel must be there. Couldn't Susan have searched Douglas' things? Offered to unpack them for Mrs. Maberley? Mary had no idea that the novel even existed--she would never notice that it was missing?!?!

Surely Mary was not at much as a shut-in as Garrideb was. Break in (or have Susan let you in) while she's at the market, or visiting friends, or at church. Why do you need to rush in and chloroform her, especially when you must know, through Susan, that Mary has no idea the manuscript exists? What's the infernal rush?

Offer Mary the contract, without the offensive clauses. Include her moving expenses as part of the deal. Stockdale and his gang pose as movers, and search the trunks while in transit...or even switch them out entirely.

There were an awful lot of options available before resulting to insane contractsand break-ins that involved physically assaulting an old woman.

**Holmes catching Susan eavesdropping: "He strode across the room, flung open the door, and dragged in a great gaunt woman whom he had seized by the shoulder. She entered with ungainly struggle like some huge awkward chicken, torn, squawking, out of its coop."

**Isadora may have felt that Susan and Barney were "good hounds who run silent."

But look at what Holmes is able to get out of Susan in about 30 seconds:

"Suppose I tell you that it was Barney Stockdale to whom you spoke?" said Holmes.

"Well, if you know, what do you want to ask for?"

"I was not sure, but I know now. Well now, Susan, it will be worth ten pounds to you if you will tell me who is at the back of Barney."

"Someone that could lay down a thousand pounds for every ten you have in the world."

"So, a rich man? No; you smiled -- a rich woman. Now we have got so far, you may as well give the name and earn the tenner."

So in quick order, Holmes gets Susan to admit she's with Stockdale, and that they're working for a wealthy woman.

Klein really shouldn't be confident of her droogs' ability to stay silent when Sherlock Holmes on the case.

**Holmes being very pawkey with Susan:

"Just a little wheezy, Susan, are you not? You breathe too heavily for that kind of work."

"Now, Susan, wheezy people may not live long, you know. It's a wicked thing to tell fibs."

"Good-bye, Susan. Paregoric is the stuff..."

See, he's laying the insults on everybody this case,. not just Dixie...

**Every homeowner's dream: "You don't happen to have a Raphael or a first folio Shakespeare without knowing it?"

**Sherlock is on a roll this day: "I was wondering whether [the previous owner] could have buried something. Of course, when people bury treasure nowadays they do it in the Post-Office bank. But there are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them."

Of course, now there's BitCoin. Then again, people are buying gold as a safety investment again these days, so maybe there are some more folks burying things in their back yards...

And yes, there are always some lunatics about.

**Holmes and Watson ask Mary in about three different ways whether or not something new had come into the household lately. It does make her look a little bit dotty to not think about the "several trunks and cases" that were lying there in plain sight.

**At their second encounter, Steve Dixie avers to help Holmes if he can, and Sherlock replies that "that the lady in that house, and everything under that roof, is under my protection."

So, did Steve take part in the break in? He certainly didn't inform Holmes about it, before or after...does Sherlock follow up on his threat to tell the authorities about the murder of Perkins?

**As mentioned above, I think not showing us Langdale Pike is a lost opportunity:

...his human book of reference upon all matters of social scandal. This strange, languid creature spent his waking hours in the bow window of a St. James's Street club and was the receiving station as well as the transmitter for all the gossip of the metropolis. He made, it was said, a four-figure income by the paragraphs which he contributed every week to the garbage papers which cater to an inquisitive public. If ever, far down in the turbid depths of London life, there was some strange swirl or eddy, it was marked with automatic exactness by this human dial upon the surface. Holmes discreetly helped Langdale to knowledge, and on occasion was helped in turn.

What a delicious description. Obviously Pike is one of the many agents Holmes employed later in his career, and, despite Watson's obvious distaste, could have been a fascinating character to meet. It also would have been nice to hear his stories about Douglas and Isadora first hand, and not have Holmes pull them out as a surprise reveal many (many) pages later.

Some commentators have said that "Langdale Pike" is such an obviously false name, that it somehow proves that this story was not canonical. Please...many a gossip columnist--not to mention dealers in secret information--have used pseudonyms.

**After the break-in, we meet "a bustling, rubicund inspector, who greeted Holmes as an old friend."

This is the only case where Doyle doesn't name the inspector. Who is it? Why not name him? Why not use Lestrade or one of the old stand-bys?

Perhaps since the inspector is portrayed as a racist and a bigger than usual dolt, Doyle didn't wish to sully Gregson et. al. with this character...

**Unnamed inspector is incompetent, and pompous about being incompetent!

Mary:"There was one sheet of paper which I may have torn from the man that I grasped. It was lying all crumpled on the floor. It is in my son's handwriting."

"Which means that it is not of much use," said the inspector. "Now if it had been in the burglar's --"

"Exactly," said Holmes. "What rugged common sense! None the less, I should be curious to see it."

The inspector drew a folded sheet of foolscap from his pocketbook. "I never pass anything, however trifling," said he with some pomposity. "That is my advice to you, Mr. Holmes. In twenty-five years' experience I have learned my lesson. There is always the chance of finger-marks or something."

Idiot.

**Douglas was certainly not destined to win any writing awards:

". . . face bled considerably from the cuts and blows, but it was nothing to the bleeding of his heart as he saw that lovely face, the face for which he had been prepared to sacrifice his very life, looking out at his agony and humiliation. She smiled -- yes, by Heaven! she smiled, like the heartless fiend she was, as he looked up at her. It was at that moment that love died and hate was born. Man must live for something. If it is not for your embrace, my lady, then it shall surely be for your undoing and my complete revenge."

It must have been fun for Sir Arthur to deliberately write so badly...

**This is the 3rd time in Case-Book when a woman of Latin American origin has played a substantial role in the story, having married a wealthy American or European and come home with him. I wonder what was going on in Sir Arthur's life that brought that about...

**That being said, Doyle does tell us that Isadora "is pure Spanish," and "her people have been leaders in Pernambuco for generations." But Pernambuco is in Brazil, which was under Dutch and then Portuguese control!! It's not impossible a Spanish family could have lived there, of course...

**Holmes describes Klein as "the richest as well as the most lovely widow upon earth." Wow. I'm not sure how extensive his research on that esoteric topic is, though.

Meanwhile, Watson may not be 100% in agreement, at least on the beauty part, as he noes "The lady had come, I felt, to that time of life when even the proudest beauty finds the half light more welcome."

As to the "wealthiest" part? The reason Isadora rejected Douglas' pleas for marriage was that he was "a penniless commoner." And nothing was more important to her then "her life's ambition" to marry a young duke, so it was "imperative" to avoid scandal. Money, and perhaps royal title, were still of great importance to her, no matter how wealthy she may have been.

**Quite a humourous bit from Watson:

A machine-like footman took up our cards and returned with word that the lady was not at home.

"Then we shall wait until she is," said Holmes cheerfully.

The machine broke down.

"Not at home means not at home to you," said the footman.

Ha ha!

**Holmes: "Surely no man would take up my profession if it were not that danger attracts him." And, by hiring goons to warn him away, Isadora "forced me to examine the case of young Maberley."

Yet another reason pursuing some alternate, easier plans for obtaining the manuscript might have been in order...

**Kudos to Isadora for being bright enough to burn the manuscript immediately, unlike many another mysteries where the criminal keeps evidence around for no good reason.

**The fickle winds of fate--if Douglas hadn't died of pneumonia, he would have sent the other copy of the (awful) manuscript to the publisher from Italy, and it would have been printed. Talk about lucky...and perhaps the reason Granada chose to make Isadora's actions the (not quite believable) cause of his illness and death. Because we don't like to think of fortune favoring the wicked like that...

**Holmes: "I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go."

Well,
this is no murderer he is freeing in this case. Yes, she is a fairly
nasty "belle dame sans merci," ruthless and cruel...but that is hardly a crime. The actual
crime, burglary and assault, are not nothing, but no one was seriously
hurt. And Mrs. Maberley wasn't even aware of what was lost, and wasn't
hurt substantially by its taking.

Still, it was a
crime, and as Holmes notes, Mrs. Klein does like to play with "edged
tools," so more incidents were not unlikely in the future.

So,
a tough call on the feeble powers of justice here. Certainly Mrs.
Maberley wouldn't have been too happy with a lurid scandal involving her
dead son, either. And she does get to travel around the world the
substantial check from Klein, AND she gets to keep her house and
furniture! And perhaps becoming a Duchess will encourage Klein to end
her questionable associations and illegal activities. So, justice?!?

**I would have loved a scene where Sherlock hands a big check to Mrs. Maberley, and tells her to go on a world cruise, but can't tell it who it's from or what it's about, or explain the mysteries of the offer to buy the house, or the break-in. Is it justice to keep your client in the dark...?

SHERLOCK HOLMES WILL RETURN IN--THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLANCHED SOLDIER!!

Sunday, November 1, 2015

I won't lie--I'm not a big fan of The Adventure Of The Illustrious Client.

Sorry. I know that's not much of a lead-in. No deep thoughts, no underlying metaphors, no discourses on what the story tells us about Victorian/Edwardian society.

To a large extent, that's because we have already covered this story before. On a fundamental plot level, Illustrious Client is the exact same story as Charles Augustus Milverton. Except it's not as good.

In both tales, Holmes is hired to protect an upper class woman from the mechanizations of an evil, evil man. After a meeting with the villain that proves Holmes has nothing in his detective arsenal to thwart the villain, Sherlock resorts to burglarizing the bad guy's home. He succeeds, but is almost caught, when a former female victim shows up and physically neutralizes the villain.

Yes, there are some differences. But these are basically the same stories. You'll recall that I wasn't fond of the Milverton story as a Sherlock Holmes story, and Illustrious repeats many of those missteps. There is no mystery to solve--we know who the bad guy is, there's never any question about that. There's no whodunnit, howdunnit or whydunnit. Hell, unlike Milverton, there's not even a crime being committed. Sherlock makes no deductions in either story, and the greatest detective of all time simply resorts to blunt force breaking and entering to "solve" the case. An outside party steps in to settle the villain's hash.

On another level, Illustrious Client just seems to be, well, a seedier, seamier story. If you disregard the speculation over the identity of the client, you're left with a tale that could as well come from some penny dreadful. Holmes is hired not to solve a crime, but to break up an engagement. He's a fixer, not a detective!! Baron Gruner may be murderer, but his chief interest seems to be using and discarding woman. He keeps a "lust book": "Snapshot photographs. names, details, everything about them. It was a beastly book -- a book no man, even if he had come from the gutter, could have put together." We get precious few details about the women he has "ruined," but one of those victims throws acid in his face, and we spend several paragraphs in a rather grisly description of the resulting injuries.

Yuck.

Yet, ironically, I found I wanted far more detail about one character in particular: Miss Kitty Winter. She's obviously of great importance in the tale--she tells Holmes about Gruner's diary; she goes with Holmes to try and convince Violet de Merville that her fiance was a snake; Holmes grabs her to help find the diary in his study; and of course she gains her vengeance by tossing vitriol on him. She's feisty, she's likable (well, at least until the acid-throwing), she's the most colorful and vital and interesting character in the story.

But we need more details to make her character work within the story. Perhaps it was due to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Victorian prudishness, but we never learn exactly how the baron wronged Kitty. He clearly didn't murder her. He pretty clearly didn't rob her of any family fortune, as the story (and both of the TV adaptations) portray her as lower class.

What then, did Gruner do to Miss Winter to make her a raving maniac whenever his name comes up? We never find out. When she has her confrontation with Violet, Kitty neglects to say a single word about what the baron did to her--negating the reason she came in the first place!! She merely comes across as a madwoman because of that, constantly raving and never explaining, which weakens her position in the narrative. It's hard to take sympathy with someone's cries from justice, when we never know what the injustice was to begin with.

When tried for the "grave crime of vitriol-throwing," "Such extenuating circumstances came out in the trial that the sentence, as will be remembered was the lowest that was possible for such an offence." What extenuating circumstances? Why aren't we told at any point in the story what actually happened to her?

Clearly Gruner did more than "love her and leave her," or cheat on her, because that certainly doesn't seem like it would be extenuating enough to let her off lightly for what could have been charged as an attempted murder.

Did he leave her with child, or force her into an abortion? Make her participate in some particularly degrading sexual acts? Did he prostitute her? Did he beat her? The Granada adaptation showed us that Gruner had scarred her neck and chest with acid himself, which makes her fury more understandable, and her acid-throw at him seem at least somewhat justified.

But in the printed story, we have no idea of what motivates Kitty Winter, unless there are some coded words and phrases in the story which made sense to a 1920s fan that now escape the modern reader. But I think Doyle was just being too delicate and discreet--a gentleman shouldn't write of such things! Yet by eliding past any actual explanations, he weakens the character, and makes us question the justice of her actions.

Holmes also treat Miss Winters very oddly. After Gruner's goons attack him, he insists that Watson get her out of town, because she is danger:

Tell Shinwell Johnson to get that girl out of the way. Those beauties will be after her now. They know, of course, that she was with me in the case. If they dared to do me in it is not likely they will neglect her. That is urgent.

But just six days later, Holmes drags Kitty along to Gruner's residence!! How unbelievably callous--"you're in grave danger from this man, now come with me to his house?!?" No wonder she brought acid!! Holmes' reason, "But I had to be sure of the position of the book, and I knew I had only a few minutes in which to act...therefore I gathered the girl up at the last moment" makes little sense. In their first meeting, Kitty had told Holmes, "How can I tell you where [the book] is now? It's more than a year since I left him." It seems a very slender thread upon which to justify bringing the woman along, risking both her safety and her arrest for abetting a felony, when the lust book might not even be in the same location.

So, as promised, no particularly deep thoughts. It's just a story I don't particularly like, and the most interesting character, who could have tied everything together much better, is underdeveloped to the point of actually harming the narrative.

OTHER TRIFLES AND OBSERVATIONS:

**For what it's worth, Sir Arthur was quite pleased with this story, telling a friend in a letter that he considered it among the top six Sherlock Holmes stories.

Well, I'm a terrible judge of my own writing, too.

**Holmes tells Watson that "it can't hurt now" to write up this adventure.

"Now" would seem to imply that earlier it hadn't been all right to tell it. Since the tale occurred in 1902, and was published in 1924, obviously something--or several somethings--had changed in the intervening 22 years.

Edward VII, most people's choice for the "illustrious client," had of course died in 1910. So there could be no fear of upsetting him--although certainly his part in tale can only make him look good, unless he were embarrassed as having been seen interfering in a society wedding. Or perhaps, given tales of Edward's past, there is a deeper reason--perhaps he is really Violet's father?!?

If Baron Gruner were still alive, some of what Watson recorded here might seem actionable--actually accusing him of a murder, assaulting detectives and of "ruining" young women, at the least. So perhaps he had passed.

The only other person who might care would be Violet de Merville, for being made to look like such a fool. She probably wouldn't be too happy that the circumstances of the breaking of their engagement be made public. Surely she had actually married by this point. Perhaps she had left the country, or maybe she had passed in the intervening decades, as well...

**"Both Holmes and I had a weakness for the Turkish bath." Do they even have Turkish baths anymore? There don't seem to be any in my neck of the woods...

**A number of commentators suggest that the following is Sherlock Holmes snidely tweaking an upper class twit:...said Holmes with a smile. "Don't you smoke? Then you will excuse me if I light my pipe.

See, Sir James Damery had not taken off his elegant gloves, and he was a bit of a dandy, so Holmes asking him if he wanted to spoke was supposedly the detective's way of subtly criticizing him for not having taken off his gloves to shake hands with them, and...

No, I really don't see that, sorry. And neither the 1965 BBC adaptation nor the Granada version do anything with that either--they show not a trace of Sherlock taking umbrage or making merry.

No, if you want a suggestion of Holmes' being so insolent, you really have to go to his reading Damery's missive: "It may be some fussy, self-important fool; it may be a matter of life or death..."

Of course, Holmes hadn't met Damery yet, and only knew of his reputation as a "fixer" and high society diplomat.

And to be honest, Damery isn't a twit at all. He doesn't take issue with Watson joining in. He doesn't talk down about people from lower classes, or from America. He shows ample respect for Holmes' power, acknowledging that Holmes could easily deduce Damery's patron if he tried. He makes sure that Holmes will "have a free hand." He listens with "deepest attention." Damery certainly comes across as much more likable and friendly than, say, Lord Cantlemere in Mazarin Stone or Lord St. Simon in Noble Bachelor. Really, the only reason Holmes could have to subtweet Damery as folks claim is that Holmes objected to his being a clothes horse.

No, if Doyle is having Holmes take the piss with Damery, it's far too subtle for me to see (or understand why).

**Despite my misgivings about the story as a whole, Watson's (and Holmes'!) character descriptions are amazing, deep and rich. When they first meet Colonel Damery:

...many will remember that large, bluff, honest personality, that broad, cleanshaven face, and, above all, that pleasant, mellow voice. Frankness shone from his gray Irish eyes, and good humour played round his mobile, smiling lips. His lucent top-hat, his dark frock-coat, indeed, every detail, from the pearl pin in the black satin cravat to the lavender spats over the varnished shoes, spoke of the meticulous care in dress for which he was famous.

Again, Watson doesn't seem to be tweaking him, either, unless "meticulous care in dress" is a subtle shot. But this reads to me like an approving assessment of the man, not a criticism at him.

**Damery on Gruner: "I should say that there is no more dangerous man in Europe."

Holmes seems a bit dismissive: "If your man is more dangerous than the late Professor Moriarty, or than the living Colonel Sebastian Moran, then he is indeed worth meeting."

Of course, Gruner does a good job of having the crap kicked out of Holmes by minions...and Holmes is not able to outwit him. So Damery's description seems apt.

**Damery: "To revenge crime is important, but to prevent it is more so."

Of course, what Gruner is doing is no crime. As distasteful as it might seem, a cad marrying a well-to-do woman isn't illegal--even if his previous wife came to a bad end.

**Damery: Gruner "has been fortunate in some rather shady speculations and is a rich man, which naturally makes him a more dangerous antagonist."

So, wait--he made his money from "shady" investments? He didn't murder his first wife for her money? Than why did he kill her?

And if he is already well off, why is he so insistent on marrying Violet? For more money? For the sheer sadism? Or...does he really love her?

**Holmes doesn't like anonymous clients: "I am accustomed to have mystery at one end of my cases, but to have it at both ends is too confusing."

**Ah, the mysterious client.

I will credit Doyle for this much--the use of this device helps disguise how much this story is merely a re-run of Milverton.

If Damery himself had been the client--or General de Merville--we wouldn't be so wrapped in speculation, deduction and argument over the identity of the "illustrious" gentleman. And without those "bookends" around the story, we might notice its weaknesses more easily.

Perhaps its just because I'm an American, but I get no particular thrill over pondering which high-born noble person is secretly Holmes' patron in this case. One prince or baron or king is as good as another to me.

Of more interest is why, exactly, King Edward (or whomever) was so adamant that "his honoured name has been in no way dragged into the matter," that his "incognito not be broken." Perhaps there was some social/class taboo; perhaps a reigning monarch simply couldn't be seen to interfere in non-royal matters. Or, as I asked above, perhaps there's some secret relationship between the monarch and the maid...

Than again, since Holmes' detection abilities were never used in this case, it is interesting that the Emperor of The British Empire didn't have someone available for burglary and undercover dirty work, without involving an outsider an commoner and risking the story getting out. "007, we have as job for you..."

**And one very important point about the plot device of the secret, illustrious client?

Sir James carried away both it and the precious saucer. As I was myself overdue, I went down with him into the street. A brougham was waiting for him. He sprang in, gave a hurried order to the cockaded coachman, and drove swiftly away. He flung his overcoat half out of the window to cover the armorial bearings upon the panel, but I had seen them in the glare of our fanlight none the less. I gasped with surprise.

Seriously, bro, if you want to keep your client's identity a secret, you don't drive around in a carriage bearing his coat of arms!!!!!!!!!! Good gravy, that's a really stupid and amateurish bit of business...

**Baron Gruner is a ladies' man:

The fellow is, as you may have heard, extraordinarily handsome, with a most fascinating manner. a gentle voice and that air of romance and mystery which means so much to a woman. He is said to have the whole sex at his mercy and to have made ample use of the fact.

**He also, apparently, does a brilliant job of innoculating his "victims" against anyone telling bad stories about him:

The cunning devil has told her every unsavoury public scandal of his past life, but always in such a way as to make himself out to be an innocent martyr. She absolutely accepts his version and will listen to no other.

Gee, if I had known it was that easy to make a woman forgiving of my flaws, well, a lot of my relation ships might have gone differently...

**This story is the first, and sadly only, appearance of Shinwell Johnson:

During the first years of the century he became a valuable assistant. Johnson, I grieve to say, made his name first as a very dangerous villain and served two terms at Parkhurst. Finally he repented and allied himself to Holmes, acting as his agent in the huge criminal underworld of London and obtaining information which often proved to be of vital importance. Had Johnson been a "nark" of the police he would soon have been exposed, but as he dealt with cases which never came directly into the courts, his activities were never realized by his companions. With the glamour of his two convictions upon him, he had the entree of every night-club, doss house, and gambling den in the town, and his quick observation and active brain made him an ideal agent for gaining information.

And Holmes:

"Johnson is on the prowl," said he. "He may pick up some garbage in the darker recesses of the underworld, for it is down there, amid the black roots of crime, that we must hunt for this man's secrets."

In other stories in the Case-Book, Watson has mentioned "agents" that Holmes used in his latter days. Shinwell is one of the few we ever actual meet.

It's an intriguing set-up, but Johnson doesn't actually do anything in the story except find Kitty Winter and introduce her to Sherlock, which seems to be considerably beneath the talents that Watson and Holmes lay out in his description.

**Watson's description of Shinwell: "a huge, coarse, red-faced, scorbutic man, with a pair of vivid black eyes which were the only external sign of the very cunning mind within."

**Holmes: "Woman's heart and mind are insoluble puzzles to the male. Murder might be condoned or explained, and yet some smaller offence might rankle."

Well, that's maybe a little bit sexist, Sherlock...

**Holmes description of Gruner:

He is an excellent antagonist, cool as ice, silky voiced and soothing as one of your fashionable consultants, and poisonous as a cobra. He has breeding in him -- a real aristocrat of crime with a superficial suggestion of afternoon tea and all the cruelty of the grave behind it...Some people's affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls.

**Holmes' attempts to sway Gruner are particularly ineffective:

No one wants to rake up your past and make you unduly uncomfortable. It is over, and you are now in smooth waters, but if you persist in this marriage you will raise up a swarm of powerful enemies who will never leave you alone until they have made England too hot to hold you.

The baron calls his bluff rather easily, and Holmes is no more effective than he was against Milverton.

**Gruner on his power over women: "You have heard of post-hypnotic suggestion. Mr. Holmes. Well you will see how it works for a man of personality can use hypnotism without any vulgar passes or tomfoolery."

Some have taken that to mean that Gruner actually did use some form of hypnosis to enchant Violet.

How silly--it's obviously a metaphor.

**Watson, after hearing of Gruner's threats against Holmes: "Must you interfere? Does it really matter if he marries the girl?"

My thoughts exactly. It's not as if she's being forced, and if she wants to be a damned fool despite the efforts of everyone in her life, well, it's a free country.

**Watson's description of Miss Winter: "a slim, flame-like young woman with a pale, intense face, youthful, and yet so worn with sin and sorrow that one read the terrible years which had left their leprous mark upon her."

**Nice turn of phrase: "If I can help to put him where he belongs, I'm yours to the rattle."

**Having called out Holmes for sexism, I feel obliged to point out Watson's take on the difference between men and women: "There was an intensity of hatred in her white, set face and her blazing eyes such as woman seldom and man never can attain."

**Holmes' description (as transcribed by Watson) of Violet:

I don't quite know how to make her clear to you, Watson. Perhaps you may meet her before we are through, and you can use your own gift of words. She is beautiful, but with the ethereal other-world beauty of some fanatic whose thoughts are set on high. I have seen such faces in the pictures of the old masters of the Middle Ages...she waved us into our respective chairs like a reverend abbess receiving two rather leprous mendicants. If your head is inclined to swell. my dear Watson, take a course of Miss Violet de Merville.

Sounds charming, doesn't she?

That's a difficulty with the story, and any adaptations: if you portray Violet as a young, flighty thing--the type you'd think might easily fall for a bad man--than the hold Gruner has on her really isn't such a big deal. We've probably all known someone like that who fell in love with the wrong man.

But you have to be careful not to overcorrect. Yes, build up Miss de Merville so Gruner's ability to enchant her is impressive. But don't make her such an unpleasant--and I hate to use the term--"ice queen" that she becomes an unsympathetic character. Unfortunately, that's how far Doyle took it. Her voice is "like the wind from an iceberg." No one "could not bring one tinge of colour to those ivory cheeks or one gleam of emotion to those abstracted eyes." "There was something indescribably annoying in the calm aloofness and supreme self-complaisance of the woman whom we were trying to save."

Now, in fairness, these were all Sherlock's descriptions. Perhaps, had Watson met her, her might have found warmer, more charitable words to draw her picture. Then again, when Sherlock Holmes says that you're being frosty and unemotional, well, he knows what he's talking about!!

When the hero of your story tells us the woman they're trying to help is icy and aloof and haughty and, well, unpleasant, it really dispels any sympathy the audience might have for her plight, and instead leaves us thinking that she probably deserves Gruner.

**So besotted is Violet, and so arrogant, that she actually believes that she is heaven's agent: "If his noble nature has ever for an instant fallen, it may be that I have been specially sent to raise it to its true and lofty level."

Oh, barf.

**I had noted this above, but it's worth mentioning again. When Kitty has her chance to tell Violet everything that Gruner had done to her...she doesn't mention a single thing. Not one. Instead, she harangues Violet, insulting her, and ultimately physically attacking her. No wonder the gambit failed!

**It's an indication of Sherlock's fame at this point in his career that an attack on him rates as front page news.

It's also fun to see that--as in The Six Napoleons--Holmes has mastered using the press to confuse his foes.

**Watson is a medical doctor, right? He seems all too willing to listen to news reports and other doctors' reports, rather than actually taking a look for himself. It's difficult to believe that Watson didn't insert a line of two along the gist of "my experience told me Holmes was right, and the injuries looked worse than they were" or some such.

**"There was a curious secretive streak in the man which led to many dramatic effects, but left even his closest friend guessing as to what his exact plans might be." Or, translated: Sherlock Holmes is a jerk!

**Watson:

The same evening papers had an announcement which I was bound, sick or well, to carry to my friend. It was simply that among the passengers on the Cunard boat Ruritania, starting from Liverpool on Friday, was the Baron Adelbert Gruner, who had some important financial business to settle in the States before his impending wedding to Miss Violet de Merville, only daughter of, etc., etc.

That does seem a little intrusive, for the press to be printing up the comings and goings of people, and passengers lists for ships, and the like. Certainly, an American would bemoan the invasion of privacy (well, at least pre-9/11).

It is mighty convenient, though. Had they not printed that notice, Holmes wouldn't have known to act in time...

**The whole gambit regarding Watson posing as an expert and connoisseur of Chinese pottery fails to work as a story element for two separate reasons.

First, we were told early in the story that Gruner had written a book on the subject. Now, it's either not credible, or extraordinarily foolish on Watson's part, to believe that during his 24 hour cram session on the subject, he didn't read Gruner's book. Either way, it makes it ridiculously easy for Gruner to disbelieve Watson's story.

Secondly, not once does Watson actually use any of that knowledge he stuffed into his head. Not once. Oh, sure, he name drops a bunch of things earlier in his narration. But go reread his meeting with Gruner--not once does he bring up a single fact that he had learned. The entire conversation would play exactly the same had Watson never picked up a single book on Chinese pottery. Watson evades, deflects or ignores every one of Gruner's queries and tests. Considering that he was playing for time, this is inexcusable. John might as well have spent that 24 hours napping.

And just how hard would it have been to come up with a vaguely plausible provenance for the Ming saucer? "The father of one of my patients had served in the Opium Wars, and when he died he left this box full of plundered antiquities to his son. Knowing my interest in such things...blah blah blah." At least that would have Gruner off guard for a few more minutes, rather than instantly being suspicious.

So, either we are to believe that Watson is a complete dunce, or that Sir Arthur did a particularly poor job writing that gambit.

**Watson's description of Baron Gruner:

He was certainly a remarkably handsome man. His European reputation for beauty was fully deserved. In figure he was not more than of middle size, but was built upon graceful and active lines. His face was swarthy, almost Oriental, with large, dark, languorous eyes which might easily hold an irresistible fascination for women. His hair and moustache were raven black, the latter short, pointed, and carefully waxed. His features were regular and pleasing, save only his straight, thin-lipped mouth. If ever I saw a murderer's mouth it was there -- a cruel, hard gash in the face, compressed, inexorable, and terrible. He was ill-advised to train his moustache away from it, for it was Nature's danger-signal, set as a warning to his victims. His voice was engaging and his manners perfect. In age I should have put him at little over thirty, though his record afterwards showed that he was forty-two.

**Sherlock really isn't a very good burglar, is he?

Then something struck upon [Gruner's] ear, for he stood listening intently...Beside [the window], looking like some terrible ghost, his head gin with bloody bandages, his face drawn and white, stood Sherlock Holmes. The next instant he was through the gap, and I heard the crash of his body among the laurel bushes outside.

**Again, Doyle goes a bit grand guignol here, devoting 4 long paragraphs to the effects of the acid thrown in Gruner's face. Yuck.

**This story does a better job than most Holmes' tales of giving us some resolution.

Still, I can't help but feel cheated by not seeing Violet receiving and reading Gruner's diary. Not chivalrous of me, I know...but Doyle does such a fine job of making her unbelievably arrogant, I'd love to see her get her comeuppance.

**Sherlock Holmes was threatened with a prosecution for burglary, but when an object is good and a client is sufficiently illustrious, even the rigid British law becomes human and elastic. My friend has not yet stood in the dock.

In other words, the fix was in, and The Man got Sherlock off the hook. In effect, he had been granted His Majesty's License To Burgle.

Still, not matter what a scumbag Baron Gruner was, or how "good" the cause is, it really doesn't show British law in a very good light when you can burgle a man's home and maim him with acid and no one pays any real penalty. Vigilante justice, sponsored and protected by The Crown. That's more the hallmark of a despotic regime than a just democracy...

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An Observance Of Trifles

I'm old enough to remember when comics were "Still Only 25¢!!"
The first comic I ever purchased on my own was Fantastic Four #170--the Thing in an exo-skeleton!! Luke Cage hired to fill the FF to 4!! The Puppet Master!! Boy, was I confused. Boy, was I hooked forever.
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